


Crawl Out Through the Fallout

by SAValentine



Series: Crawl Out Through the Fallout [1]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 3, Fallout 4, Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Character Death, Gen, Gore, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-11
Updated: 2018-03-11
Packaged: 2019-03-30 00:33:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,749
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13938792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SAValentine/pseuds/SAValentine
Summary: A series of shorts that are set out in the 'Crawl Out Through the Fallout' series. Back stories of characters, locations, or items. Some scenes will be ones that the characters reference in game, while some will be referenced in story.Characters/Applicible Warnings at the beginning of each chapter.





	Crawl Out Through the Fallout

**Author's Note:**

> This first chapter I moved from 'Atom Bomb Baby' since it was the only one that wasn't AU.  
> Original Characters. Graphic Violence.

Somewhere in the Wasteland

 

“So, what are you gonna spend your caps on, Ren?” The voice was gruff and deep. Manny. She didn’t even bother looking over at him, her fingers locked behind her head as they walked, and hummed slightly at the question. She opened her mouth and Dick interrupted.

“I’m checking out that brothel we passed in town.” His tone was somewhere between lustful and wistful.

“Gonna introduce some of them to good ol’ Dick, are ya?” Betty teased, chuckling. Dick and Ren joined in the laughter, but Manny made a loud, disgusted noise.

“That was a ghoul brothel! Why would you wanna sleep with one of them?”

“I mean, they’re still a fair sight prettier looking than you.” Ren shot down the remark with a wicked grin. His offended look made the rest of them laugh again.

“Cruel, Ren. Very cruel.” Stung a bit more since she’d turned him down ages ago. “It’s not like you’d fuck–”

They all stopped walking. Something was wrong. Half a mile away and the air was deathly quiet. The encampment was full of rambunctious jackasses who could barely stay quiet long enough to ambush a hapless mark. The four of them had seen no sign of travelers on their way. None of them liked it.

They looked at each other, the indecision and anxiety plain on their faces. They could just leave. Go back to town. Come back later. They weren’t expected until tomorrow anyway. They could also just never come back. Split the money between the four of them and not worry about the others. They probably split for a new gig anyway.

Yea, that was all it was.

They could see the same thoughts crossing over the others’ faces. It was Ren who spoke. The only one who’d really ever had any sort of real family out of the four of them, the only one with a sense of what that meant.

“We gotta check it out.” Her voice was quiet but set in stone. She’d check it out even if they didn’t. And they knew that. There were nods all around. “I’m going to my nest to get a better look.”

“We’ll go ahead.” Betty nodded down the path towards the encampment. The two men have a moment of hesitation before they nodded as well. They all began walking forward, crouched.

Ren watched them for a moment before she moved diagonally towards the encampment. Her nest was slightly removed from the rest of the encampment so that she could spot the target before the rest of them, and either take them ou herself, or send word back to the others to head out.

She paused, halfway there, and felt the wind pick up. She tried to smell past the usual scent of chemical, rotted YumYums, and shit that permeated the air of the wasteland. There was a slight sickly sweet scent left, probably the brahmin they’d left to rot before heading out. She didn’t know why she had expected to smell anything else. Shaking her head, she continued on.

But the smell got stronger the closer she got to her nest. She didn’t like that one bit. She slowed down, peering through her scope to look around every few steps. Nothing moved. When she finally saw the cluster of trees that hid her nest, she found the smell.

Three dogs were splayed out at the bottom of the tree, bodies torn open and rotting. It looked like the attack dogs must’ve gotten into a fight with each other. Yea. That’s what it was. She wrinkled her nose, but didn’t bother to stop to look closer at them. It wasn’t important.

She slung her rifle across her back and made her way up the tree, grabbing the knots and branches along the way for grip. The platform was barely big enough for her and hidden from view in the middle of the copse of trees, a couple extra gnarled branches strategically nailed together to give an extra advantage.

Reaching the top, she jerked back in shock and had to catch herself from falling backward.

It was Mark. He was clutching his stomach, his face screwed in pain, hanging half off the platform. She crawled forward, watching him. But he didn’t move. Didn’t breathe. A knot grew in her stomach. He was dead.

She didn’t need to move the body, and she was honestly a little afraid to. She still didn’t know what had happened. She steeled herself and turned to face the encampment. The nest was designed for her to point to the road, not back to camp, so she had to kneel instead, resting her rifle on the table.

She peered through the scope, slowly sweeping her gaze across the landscape. She peered right at the camp, trying to see past the fences. There was movement, but she couldn’t see what it was. It moved too fast. She cursed slightly and moved her scope to find the others, the knot winding tighter and tighter as she laid eyes on them.

She knew what it was. The others didn’t yet.

She had to warn them. She pulled her radio from her pocket and clicked it, twice. Their code for trouble. She watched them. None of them had checked their radios. She tried again, urgently. She moved to make sure she was on the right channel, eyes off the scope, when she heard it.

The Deathclaw’s scream rang through her ears.

She scrambled back to the scope, searching for the others. She caught sight of Dick first– held aloft. She reacted without thinking, taking aim and firing off a shot. It hit the thing in the arm that was holding Dick. But not before it got to run those claws through him, skewering the man. His mouth was open in a scream, and she could almost hear it. If sound had actually been coming out. The creature dropped his body and turned towards her, but she was too far away.

Instead, it focused Betty, pipe pistol in hand, firing off shots at the thing like it would make a difference. Damn it, why wasn’t she running? It took a swipe, and she managed to stumble back, the claws only raking across one arm as she fell. Ren was lining up another shot. It was hard. Her hands were shaking, breath coming out quick.

A mantra of ‘fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck’ surrounded her. She wasn’t sure if it was from herself, or the others at this point.

Manny shot the thing with his shotgun, darting back to keep it away from Betty. Almost obediently, it followed. Ren fired a shot, the bullet thrown wide, whizzing past it. Another curse under her breath. The creature descended on Manny, taking another shotgun blast to the gut.

It didn’t even flinch, tearing right into him, tearing into flesh. She aimed at it. It was so busy that it wasn’t likely to move soon as it ate him. Lining up her shot, she closed her eyes, taking a slow breath, and pulled. She only opened her eyes then. And that’s when she saw her mistake.

Betty had stood up in that time, had turned to run. Ren watched as her friend’s head jerked back violently, body twisting as she fell. She let out a choked sob when she realized what had happened and collapsed backwards unto the platform.

It was just her. Dick and Manny and Betty were all dead. Betty by her own stray bullet. The others in the encampment were definitely dead. Deathclaws didn’t leave anything behind. And she was still close enough that it could find her. She swore. She had to kill it. It was already injured, shouldn’t be too hard.

She moved back to her position and looked for the creature. It wasn’t near the bodies anymore. Fear creeping up her spine, she hurriedly checked the path leading up to her, praying that it hadn’t scented her.

It wasn’t there. She was still downwind, Thank God. A few seconds later she found it. Moving back into the encampment, dragging Betty and Dick’s bodies behind it, one leg from each of them grasped in its claw. Dinner.

She lined up the shot. It was way too far away. She didn’t even know if she could hit it. She took too long deciding whether she should even try. It moved behind the fences and it was out of her line of sight.

She swore. She could probably leave now. Run like hell back to town and pray it didn’t catch wind of her.

That rarely succeeded, she knew. If she’d have done that while the others were still alive, maybe she could have. But getting down from her nest now and running would be risky. It was noisy and she couldn’t guarantee the wind wouldn’t change in the middle of it.

And it could definitely outrun her. A fraction of bad luck and she’d be dead.

No, she’d definitely have to kill it.

Leaning on the table, she popped a mentat and peered through her scope. Watching. Waiting. And waiting. And waiting.

She didn’t realize she’d fallen asleep until she heard the scream. Jolting again, she lurched back glancing around, surveying the area. It wasn’t near her, as far as she could tell, so she checked through the scope. It was close. Halfway between her and the camp. She watched it kill a trader, his brahmin running away in the distance. It didn’t follow just yet. Instead, it hunched over, and began to devour its kill, heaving bloody chunks of meat into it’s mouth. She knew she probably wouldn’t have another chance like this any time soon,

She took her time. Breathing slowly as she lined it up. The wind changed, and it looked up, towards her. And she took her shot. She didn’t want to give it a chance. The bullet barrelled through the side of its neck, tearing through the flesh.

But it was still alive. And now it could smell her. She knew. She swore. She couldn’t track it as it ran towards her, no matter how she tried.

In a second it was in front of the copse of trees. It screamed again, searching for her. The rot of the dogs and of Mark masked her scent from it directly. But it wouldn’t take it too long. It wasn’t enough to turn it away.

She had to stand to see it, no longer using the scope to aim. She fired. It hit a shoulder, but it still wasn’t enough, and now it knew where she was. It raked its claws at the branches to no avail: She was too high up for it to reach her.

She reached into her pocket and pulled out her chems jerkily. They spilled out to unto the wood beneath her, mentats popping open, psycho rolling off and unto the ground. Only the jet had stayed in her hand.

“Fuck.” She reached for the mentats, grabbing at them and stuffing as many as she could grab into her mouth. Berry and grape and orange mixed in her mouth and she chewed hard before swallowing.

Gun in front of her, she could see the shot she needed to take. It was highlighted perfectly. She began to pull on the trigger when its claws swiped through the main branch supporting the platform and it tilted forward. Her shot went high. She gasped and started to slide down toward it as it slashed again, removing the last of the branches between her and itself. She took a second to think and jammed the jet to her mouth, inhaling sharply. Once. Twice. She’d go out high, if nothing else. Time slowed as it moved towards her. She could see the malice in its eyes. Could smell the blood on it.

Its claws were reaching for her, stretching out, fingers splayed wide, one tearing at the platform, the other, injured and weakened from her earlier shots, was the one that swiped across her stomach. She didn’t have time to recoil, to even think, because it had lined itself up perfectly.

The bullet sped out of the barrel and she swore she heard it crack through the skull. A hard, wet sound as the creature’s head snapped back at a terrible, deadly angle. It fell back to the ground with a loud thump.

Unfortunately, she did too. Landing right on top of it, she couldn’t stop the scream that ripped her throat as she jammed her rifle butt into it. Fear coursed through her. Fear. And rage. Over and over and over she beat into it. She only stopped when it’s head and throat were nothing more than a ragged, bloody mess. She stumbled back off of it when she realized what she’d been doing, putting her back to the tree. And winced. She’d managed to impale her leg on one of the claws when she’d fallen and it had slipped out with a sickening slurp. Not to mention her stomach, torn open and bleeding.

She pressed her hand to her stomach, desperate to make sure her guts weren’t spilling out. The cut was luckily too shallow for that. She didn’t know how long she stood there, staring at the body, eyes wide and pupils blown. Harder still with the chems in her system.

When they wore off, she stumbled as carefully as she could to where her things had slid off the platform. Stuffing the rest of her chems back into her bag and searching for her stimpaks. She only had one left, and she jammed it into her leg. She needed to get back to town. She needed to get the rest of her things.

Taking a deep breath, she steadied herself. The chems may have worn off, but her body was still recovering from them, a dull throb starting behind her eyes. She had to ignore it. She made her way back to the encampment, crouching just in case something else came along. God forbid there were more. She would definitely be dead then.

The smell of rot and death only grew as she came closer. Crossing through the fences, she had to stop to retch at the sight. The encampment was a slaughterhouse. Her group–her friends– were massacred, torn to pieces of meat and flesh barely recognizable as human, entrails strewn everywhere. Someone’s head was in front of her. She didn’t look closely enough to find out whose.

From there, it was a bit of a haze as she moved through the bodies. The trader’s brahmin had fled there and she took advantage of that. She loaded it up with as much as it could carry, looting the bodies of her fallen friends, detached from everything at this point. Just like it was another of their raids. The day passed, and crept into the night. She slept briefly between all of it, curled into a sleeping bag as far away from the bodies as possible.

She took time to tend to her wounds and use another stimpak when she woke up– this time to her stomach. Collecting all the chems was the most important task. Then ammo and caps. Finally, whatever she could sell.

When the brahmin heavy with goods, she moved back towards the road, leading the creature behind her. It definitely made her a target. But she was going to have to start over, and she needed the caps. She was going to get out of this part of the Wasteland. She didn’t know where she was going to go, but she needed to be gone.

She stopped at the body of the Deathclaw on her way out. It’s face was a bloody chasm, and she stared into it, a snarl creeping across her lips, her anger and grief creeping back up into her chest, tightening her throat.

She turned to the brahmin abruptly and pulled an axe out of a holster on the side and swung at the thing desperately, hacking off it’s deadly claws. She left the axe where it lay, but took the claws and tied them to her belt.

Ren took one glance back at the encampment she’d called her home for a little over a year now. The bodies of the people she’d called her friends, her family, for nearly five years. She hadn’t bothered to bury them. None of them would have cared anyway. And she wanted to try to get to town before nightfall.

**Author's Note:**

> I know, starting off with an original character. There will be more familiar faces in here soon.


End file.
